


Dum Spiro Spero

by biggrstaffbunch



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:28:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggrstaffbunch/pseuds/biggrstaffbunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Toast and tea and Rose," he mutters, and kisses her again. The inside of her mouth is slick and warm and tastes faintly like grape preserves and Earl Grey. "Now why didn't I think of that?" He makes a comical face, one of his braces slipping down a shoulder. "Stupid old me. Fish and custard, indeed. To be fair, she'd have had a tough time of getting <i>you</i> out of the icebox, but still--"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dum Spiro Spero

|

 

He comes back ten years after he left the last time, and five years after she is past the point of hoping.

There is a knock on the door a week after her thirtieth birthday, and when the heavy oak swings open, there is a young man standing on her front porch with a sheepish grin on his face and a big blue police box behind him. Without preamble, she asks: "Is the world ending? Am I dying? Are you dying?" She grabs his sleeve and brings him nose-to-nose, looks through the new face and the new hair and sees the soul of him resting beneath the surface, as old and weary as ever before. Her voice goes low, and she demands, "Did you come back for me?"

The _finally_ goes unsaid, vanishing into the summer air, shimmering like heat. But the _for once_ is a living thing on her lips, bitter and dark. 

He winces, and she is glad.

Standing there on her front step, dressed in braces and a bow-tie, his hair in a jaunty sweep across his forehead, he looks like an alien. Like a stranger. Like a little boy, wearing silly clothes and a silly smile and sending not even a pang of recognition echoing through her heart. 

But then he smiles, and in that smile, there is something wild and mad and gloriously familiar. It is an old smile that promises adventure, and mystery, and more. For a moment, she cannot catch her breath, and finds she must swallow hard against the exhilaration that suddenly fills her lungs like balloons. 

"Rose Tyler," the Doctor says. "Was there ever any doubt?"

(Yes, there was doubt. Always before, she was a woman of faith, living with wishes in her heart and her heart on her sleeve. Gold spilling from her eyes, or dimension cannon strapped to her back, she twice found her way through the maze of time and space, with only letters to lead the way. She has been tenacious, and she has been strong. She has been loyal, and she has dreamed without reserve.

But there was doubt.)

Rose gives him a sigh as her only answer, and turns to retreat into her home. It is the Doctor's choice to follow or not, as it always has been.

He chooses. The door closes behind him.

 

|

 

"Gone," she says, and though her voice is curt, grief drenches the word. ""He was half Time Lord, and half human. He died. Like humans do." She blinks, a tear winking in her eye. "Suddenly. But not unexpectedly, if that makes sense."

Rose sips her tea, takes a bite from her toast, looks out the window. The sunlight mellows the sharp turns of her face, makes her look young and wistful. Slides over the honey blonde of her hair and turns it a shimmering gold, brightens the whites of her eyes and the pale of her skin. She is so lovely that she makes his throat ache, and the Doctor reaches out his hand to cradle the hollowed plane of her cheek, thumb pressing gently into the shadows under her eyes. 

Her lashes flutter shut, and her shoulders expand around a sigh. She trembles as she inhales, her own hand reaching up to snag his. Their fingers fold into a fist, hand over hand, and as the frame of her body closes over a shuddering breath, Rose brings his knuckles to her lips.

"Time Lords die, too." Her gaze traces the map of his features, the thread of her breath melting across the Doctor's skin. "I always knew you would go," she whispers. "I just didn't know it would keep on happening."

The Doctor feels something break inside of him and dangle precariously in his throat, like a cable snapping from a suspension bridge high above water, swaying in the wind. "Oh, Rose," he says. "I thought I was giving you a gift."

A piece of myself, he doesn't say. The part of him that could love her without reserve.

Her mouth turns down, and the kitchen is eerily still. Distantly, the Doctor wonders where Rose's family has gone.

"He was a man," she says finally. "He was his own part of himself, however much he was a part of you. I've mourned _you_ long enough, more than once in my life. I don't want to do it anymore, Doctor." She raises her eyes, and there is a defiance that illuminates the feline cast of her glare. "When we buried him, I thought about our wedding day. Not about meeting Charles Dickens."

He knows without being told; she is trying to tell him that she lives not in the past or the future any longer, but the moment itself. And in many ways, this is true for him, as well. There is Amy, back in his own world, dealing with the ramifications of the dimensional rift that got him here in the first place. There is cleanup to be done, and he has a long history of practice in moving on, and on, and beyond. But as always since he met this girl (now a woman) with liquid-soft eyes and a beaming grin, the Doctor thinks of stealing from time. Retreating into the man he was, just for awhile, just until he's strong enough to be the man he _is_ once again.

"You didn't want me to come back for you." It is a statement, not a question, but it is answered anyway by the slow crumple of Rose's rose-petal mouth.

"I didn't want to want you to come back for me," she corrects, but does not let go of his hand.

 

|

 

The universe is not ending. Worlds are not collapsing. Nothing is wrong, not really. But he is here, and by the intensity of the Doctor's face as he brings her mouth to his, Rose can tell that he is here for her. It means something, that in this most recent meeting, she is not the one chasing ghosts. 

And so a part of her armor falls away, her pretty blouse slipping over her arms and down her waist, fluttering to the floor in a flimsy heap.

She will likely never travel through time and space again. He will likely never find his way back to her land of gingerbread houses. They will likely never see each other after today, or if they do, it will be another ten years into the future, and she will be even older, and he will be even younger. There are no guarantees. More than everything ends, everything changes.

So because she has not forgotten him and likely never could, and because he has not forgotten her and probably should, because there is a deep sadness that goes along with the deep pleasure of both those thoughts, Rose lets her trousers sag around her hips and then go the way of her blouse.

She thinks _Carpe diem_ and takes a step towards him.

 

|

 

He still loves jam and bananas, so he eats her toast and the one meant to be his. When he points this out to her with an earnest grin, nostalgia darkens the fond glow in Rose's eyes, chases a laugh down the long column of her spine, spilling over into a gasping chuckle as he kisses her with clinging lips and sticky fingers in her hair.

"Toast and tea and Rose," he mutters, and kisses her again. The inside of her mouth is slick and warm and tastes faintly like grape preserves and Earl Grey. "Now why didn't I think of that?" He makes a comical face, one of his braces slipping down a shoulder. " _Stupid_ old me. Fish and custard, indeed. To be fair, she'd have had a tough time of getting _you_ out of the icebox, but still--"

Rose arches a brow. "You make less sense than ever," she informs him politely, and then unravels his bow tie, bit by bit. It slips free of his collar with an audible _ssspf!_ and the sliver of skin revealed by his gaping collar is made even more tantalizing by the way she ducks, licks a line up the tendon of his neck, stamping the end of her journey with a hot, open-mouthed kiss against the stubbly edge of his jaw.

"Have you still got a clever tongue?" she asks, and the irreverence of the question elicits a stunned laugh from the deepest pit of his belly.

He manages a saucy wink, snaps his braces with gusto. "Try and see," he suggests.

A considering look, and then Rose does just that.

 

|

A scientific observation, care of one Rose Tyler.

Kissing the Doctor now is not unlike kissing him back when he had ice-blue eyes and a shaved head, or when he wore a long brown coat and kicky white Converse. He's a bit more tactile than before, his fingers shoved through her hair and his body insinuating itself as close to hers as possible, but these are changes she can live with, she thinks.

What hasn't altered a bit is that loose-limbed, lambent feeling that spreads through her as he touches her elbow and pleads, in a hoarse voice, "Let me look at you, you lovely, _beautiful_ girl. It's been ages since I've had a proper look at you."

Rose steps back, unaccountably shy and slightly cold. In a lacy bra and a pair of mismatched knickers, her hair in a disarray and her skin stained with blush, she feels on display and wonders if she'll be found wanting. Though there's a softness to her stomach that has come with age and a slower metabolism and less active lifestyle, she knows her legs still look impossibly long, the varnish on her toes a baby-soft pink. Her hands are soberly adorned, just a simple wedding ring and blunt, square-cut nails without any polish, but her toes are a concession the girlhood she has left behind.

"Rose," the Doctor breathes, and comes closer. His hip jostles the table, and their teacups fall to the floor, shattering on impact. Tea seeps across the tile in pools as dark as ink, but he simply steps through the puddles, unmindful of the violence with which he is moving.

"Doctor--"

He presses her against the wall before she can speak, hiking one of her legs up and holding it against his waist, his hand tracing the bony ridge of her knee, following a slow path up the muscled length of her thigh. Her foot flexes as a heated shiver ripples through her. Something in her gut tightens as his thumb plays with the elastic of her knickers, dipping under the silk in large, slow circles.

"That's the same shade you wore when you traveled with me," he says. "Reminded me of candy floss. Those sugared hearts you give out on Valentine's Day. A bubblegum-flavored jelly belly." He leans in, breath fanning across her neck, hair falling in his eyes. "I'm very invested in this body's renewed gustatory sense," he informs her apologetically. "I think it might become rather inconvenient for you. I'm always hungry, of late."

Braced over her, with one hand one her bum and the other against the wall, the Doctor is predatory and lean. Rose feels heavy and achey under him, her skin stretched tight over her rapidly-pumping blood, her heart beating out of her chest. It has been so long since she's been touched like this, and she feels a shock from even the slightest brush of his hand go from the tops of her ears to the tips of her breasts to the soles of her feet. 

"What a coincidence," she says faintly, as he gently but insistently tugs off her underwear. "So am I."

 

|

 

They move like a head-on collision, the instant impact of their bodies and lips, and the ensuing tangle of machinery.

Her hands in his hair, her legs around his waist, his thumb rubbing at the circuitry of nerves at the center of her, her hand stroking him through his trousers. Chest against chest, mouth against mouth, the rush of breath rising like fire in the engine, the hot press of skin like leather in the sun.

And a rumble in his chest, starting low until he's fairly growling into her shoulder, a movement of gears that corresponds to every skim of her hand at the head of him, the spike in his blood as she bites gently at the fleshy lobe of his ear. 

They still work even though they're broken, the two of them, though the Doctor thinks dimly of the cleanup.

 

|

 

A small part of Rose imagines, with a detached sense of horror, what it might look like should her family walk into the kitchen at this moment.

There would be the serene, yellow-lit quiet of the spacious room, the large windows open and the smell of bread and tea filling the corners. Eyes would immediately fall on the small center table, where two plates, one with a half-eaten bit of toast and the other with barely crumb, sit. The jam is open and tipped over, and a small dish of butter melts by the minute. And on the floor, in an almost artsy tableau, lay the shattered remains of two fine china cups, the shimmering pools of cold tea spreading out from under the shards like stains of blood.

And then Rose might laugh, or the Doctor would curse, and her mum and dad and little brother Tony would turn their heads to the wall nearest to the pantry and they would see:

The back of a man with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, his shirt untucked and his trousers falling around his ankles; long, pale legs wrapped around the waist of the man, and two bare arms draped over his shoulders; a glimpse of blonde hair and a cheeky smile as the man ducks his nose into her neck, his own darker hair disheveled and damp with sweat.

The wall would have a hole in it. The chairs would be tipped over. And the sounds made by her and the Doctor in the space of her family's silence would be frankly obscene.

Rose moans as the Doctor's tongue comes in contact with the bud of her nipple, the soft round of her breast bared to his mouth. His hand is still dexterous as always at the apex of her thighs, fingers stroking in and out in conjunction with her sighs, his thumb circling tight around the bundle of nerves that sends long threads of aching pleasure spiraling through her.

It's a good thing that the Tyler family is on holiday in Cornwall for the next two days.

"I've got such plans for you," she says breathlessly, guiding his face to her other breast. He smiles into her skin at the promise.

 

|

 

They move to the bedroom eventually, as the sun moves from the highest point in the sky to a place where the light is more pink and there are shadows slanting across the floor.

Rose flops on the bed, inelegant and eager, naked except for the occasional swing of her hair curling over her breast. Her eyes are dark and curious, hungry. She unbuttons the Doctor's shirt with care, tongue between lips and gaze fastened to his. They have already done unspeakably intimate acts in the presence of all manners of kitchen appliances, but somehow here, in the sanctum of her room, where she sleeps and dreams and breathes and lives, the air between them is charged and uncertain.

"You didn't even wait to take your clothes off before you molested me," she scolds, slipping the shirt over the Doctor's shoulders, hands smoothing over his arms, fingers tracing his veins. Delicate fingers, the lines and shapes that he knew best, once upon a time. "You move so quickly through life, and get to experience so much." Her tone turns thoughtful, and she dangles the shirt in front of his face for a second before flipping it behind her with a mischievous grin. "But how much do you really remember, after all is said and done?"

Rose leans in, and now that they are both only clad in skin, the heat that storms between them is almost unbearable. Every hair on his body is raised with a certain kind of electricity, and the world seems to narrow to black, with only her grin as the light to split the darkness. The Doctor can hear the thoughts in her brain, hazy and ephemeral, like faded writing scrawled on a cloudy chalkboard. Words like _want_ and _need_ and _really good hair_ , and more distinct than the others, _please do you think of me sometimes_. 

He brings her fully against him, swallows the gasp that tumbles from her mouth, hums into the groan that builds in her throat. Her thighs part around him and her back arches into a deep curve, and he moves the hair from her ear to whisper:

"I remember everything, Rose."

And though he is centuries old, though there are countless things to recall, though he prefers not to remember and sometimes purposely sets out to forget, it is true. There in his magnificent brain that lately has had the luck of being covered by equally magnificent hair, lies a collection of images and thoughts and words for every eternal microsecond of his life. His brain is a supercomputer of recollections, that if he wanted, he could sift through and discard or reshape at will. But there are memories he will dare not touch, would rather not alter.

"You," the Doctor clarifies, and the doubt melts from the brackets around her mouth as he whispers each word against her lips. "Especially you. Perhaps always you."

There is no tear that slips from the closed fan of her lashes, but he can feel Rose cry in the tremble of her fingers down the side of his face.

 

|

 

It is hello and goodbye all at once. 

Rose guides the Doctor home, cradles him with her body, welcomes him with her heart, and as the pressure builds in the pit of her stomach, as their bodies move in rhythm and their hands meet in twin clasps, she makes herself open her eyes so she can memorize one more face.

He is handsome, in an odd way, a strange combination of her first Doctor and her second Doctor, with all the leonine planes of the former's face as well as the floppy-hair, boyish good looks of the latter. His eyes are dark, hooded. He looks at least five years younger than she. And he is smiling, fingers squeezing hers in time with his thrusts, a surge of energy lighting his face with each slow step closer to that blinding oblivion that Rose just _knows_ is in the offing.

She wants to keep every second of this someplace where not even time can take it from her. She wants to print it up like a ticket she can save in a scrapbook, pore over a physical, tangible reminder that this truly happened. She wants to grab the letters out of the air and paint them all over him, B-A-D W-O-L-F. 

But she can't do any of those things. Soon, he will go, because he has to and because he ought to. And she will be left here, to continue what she has always done: live a very full, very human, very fantastic life. With or without him.

So Rose arches her hips to meet his, and chants his name under her breath, and slams their entwined hands down on the mattress as her body goes still and then rides the twisting, crashing, pulsing pleasure that is moving relentlessly through her. The Doctor follows moments after, caging her with his arms as he slumps over her, breathing heavily into groans. 

In the midst of his noise, she mutters "I love you," and "Don't go." Lets her words get lost where they belong, in the past that's gone and the future that might never happen. There is no space for them in the present.

Not anymore.

 

|

 

When the stars clear from the Doctor's eyes (literal stars, constellations he has seen ten lives before and named them so many times that they're named twice, no really, there's a few that are actually named New New New New York) Rose disentangles her hand from his, reaches up lazily to rake fingers through his hair, to press her name into his skin, drawing in loopy cursive letters all the way down the nape of his neck, the ladder of his spine.

"You've misspelled your own name, Ms. Tyle," he mumbles sleepily, after a pause. "Bully for you."

"Or maybe you just didn't feel the end of it, on account of your dulled senses that come with advanced age," Rose suggests, serene. The Doctor snuffles madly at her, makes a noise that makes her shriek with laughter. He laughs, too, delighted.

After a comfortable moment of what the Doctor can only deem 'snuggling,' Rose continues: "Here's the missing piece, in any case." And she draws an R, big and undeniable, right over his hearts. Large enough to cover both of them, her pinkie sweeping the ends into loops sweetly. 

He presses a hand over hers, looks at her intently as she shifts to face him. For too long to quantify, and too fast to believe, he contemplates the full impact of what he's done here. Fallen through a completely unexpected time-rift, landed on the doorstep of a woman he thought he'd never see again, slept with her in a series of rather odd but oddly wonderful life choices, and--

And cocked it all up. (There's a pun there, but he's not so crass as to point it out.)

The Doctor knows that he will go. Whether in the next second or tomorrow or after a long, fulfilling life here on this parallel world, he will have to find another time-rift, another crack-in-the-universe. Because he does not belong here, and Rose does. She has left her footprints on this planet's ground, has built herself into its frame. She cannot leave. Because she is permanent. The staying sort.

Him, though. He's built to leave, he sometimes thinks. To take his TARDIS and run as far as his legs will take him, until all that's left is dust and stories. His clone was less of a clone and more the half of him that always longed to stick around and see what wonders one world had to offer. 

But this Doctor isn't like that. He _can_ go. And he will. Just for now, he will do what he does best, and wear another face. Pretend a while longer. Live another man's life.

"Here is the missing piece," the Doctor agrees, and kisses Rose asleep.

 

|

He's gone when she wakes up, ten hours after he comes back for the last time, and five hours after she is back to the point of hoping.

Nothing is left of him. No scent, no mark, not even the sweat on her body. It is disquieting, this sense of loss, because Rose thought she was over it by now. Or at the very least, used to it.

Instead, she clutches the duvet to her chest, closes her eyes against the tears, and summons up the sincerity in his voice when he was whispering her name, promising he would remember.

A grand old adventure, they had. One more time. And who's to say it won't happen again? The universe _always_ needs saving, and the Doctor is rather hopeless when it comes to doing it alone.

Rose smiles, but she does not plan. Because life happens to her, not the other way around. And somewhere in another world, Rose Tyler lives on in a man who might live on for centuries. 

For the first time in ever, that is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted from LiveJournal.


End file.
